Health in All Policies

APHA promotes a health in all policies approach as a strategy for addressing the complex factors that influence health and equity, also referred to as the social determinants of health, which include educational attainment, housing, transportation options, and neighborhood safety.

Health in All Policies: A Guide for State and Local Governments was created by the American Public Health Association, Public Health Institute and the California Department of Public Health, in response to growing interest in using collaborative approaches to improve population health by embedding health considerations into decision-making processes across a broad array of sectors. The Guide draws heavily on the experiences of the California Health in All Policies Task Force and incorporates information from the published and gray literature and interviews with people across the country.

Health in All Policies: Tools for embedding health in government decision-making

On November 5, 2013, representatives from the Public Health Institute and California Department of Public Health presented at the APHA Annual Meeting in Boston, MA. The presentation included a discussion of Health in All Policies: A Guide for State and Local Governments. In addition, panelists introduced tools for building long-term interagency partnerships, described methods for embedding health and equity into government processes, and provided examples of state and local uses of the Health in All Policies approach.

PowerPoint slides (PDF format) from the presentations are available below

On this webinar Berkeley Media Studies Group discussed how organizations can develop and refine their messages to support Health in All Policies and make the case for why Health in All Policies is essential to help protect physical and fiscal health, advance community engagement, and build relationships across government sectors.

A recording of the October 2, 2013 webinar and the slides are available here

Intersectoral Collaboration for Health: Reports from Local Health Departments

View the recording of the November 15, 2012 webinar: mp3 or wmv, Transcript: Word

Increasingly, local communities throughout the U.S. are adopting a health in all policies framework to improve health and equity by incorporating health considerations into decision-making across all sectors.

This 90-minute webinar includes a short overview of the health in all policies approach, and an introduction to the work of Baltimore’s Cross Agency Health Taskforce and Sonoma’s Health Action, including history, accomplishments, and a discussion of the lessons learned from these exciting local initiatives.

View the recording of the September 6, 2012 webinar: mp3, Transcript: Word

Health in All Policies is a collaborative approach to improve health by incorporating health considerations into decision-making across all policy areas. This webinar provided an overview of the Health in All Policies approach and reviewed the work of California’s Health in All Policies Task Force - the first state-level, United States effort to institutionalize this approach.